HueScope Separator creates art by detecting watercolor pigments within photos, and then rendering the translucent regions that it finds.

The target colors mimic actual watercolor pigments and create a list of regions which overlay upon each other, blending their colors in the way that actual watercolor washes would blend upon each other onto paper. HueScope Separator is a free downloadable software application, similar to HueScope PhotoStrator, but with a smaller set of tools and features.

If a contour sketch in pencil, charcoal, or ink is desired, Separator can also detect outlines. Separator comes with many controls which can modify the color detection and rendering process, so that you can make adjustments in generating a variety of color illustrations from a single photo. Watercolor artists can also use Separator to experiment with different color palettes before execution onto paper.

Separator is so easy to use that you do not need to know anything about art to quickly start creating interesting color illustrations from your digital photos. Press the "Download" Button at the bottom of the page to receive a free copy of HueScope Separator for your computer.

Separator is easy to use. Just load a photo, tweak a few controls on the Separation Creation dialog, press the Preview Button, and you'll have your first layered illustration. And since the "Always Calculate New Palette" is checked, the five target colors seen in the diagram at the right (Purple, Cerulean Blue, Sap Green, etc) were specifically chosen to fit the particular source photo which was loaded.

Up to 19 target colors of popular watercolor pigments can be selected in detecting the five sequential Color Separations which mimic the palette of colors in watercolor painting, as they create their resultant regions of color. At any point the user can override the automatic calculation of a color palette, by individually selecting any of 19 colors for a specific color separation's row.

After the five Color Separation Rows' colors are chosen, the user can also fine-tune the entire detection process by adjusting the three slider controls in the PreProcessing group box. The sliders can increase or decrease the color saturation (Sat), or make the final image darker or lighter. The colors of the palette as well as the size of the regions, are dependant upon the settings of the PreProcessing group box.

By changing selections in the Color Sets drop-down box, the user can pick from numerous sets of watercolor pigments, whose colors will be used to calculate the final palette of the five Color Separation colors.

After a Color Separation does its detection for a target watercolor pigment (ex: Hookers Green), it then creates translucent regions of that color which will paint over any existing regions in the Layered Window, thus creating a final illustration.

Since the regions are translucent, they will blend in areas where they intersect with one another to create a new color. This is done in the same way that different watercolor washes would blend upon each other onto paper.

In the image at the right, you can see the result of two Color Separation, one in Vermillion and the other in Hookers Green. In areas where two differently colored regions overlap, they blend to create a new color, a brownish-green. HueScope apps digitally recreate the same color blending rules that would apply to real watercolor pigments if they were overlayed upon each other onto paper.

The size and detail of the final color regions can be controlled by the Brush Size control of the Color Separation Creation dialog above. A larger brush setting will give bold and larger regions, while a smaller brush setting will create smaller and more detailed regions.

If you would like to add a contour sketch to your color illustration, Separator also has an automated edge-detection interface which you can quickly apply using the source photo.

Various settings on the outline creation interface allow you to control the detail, the length of lines, and the shape of lines. You can also pick from a variety of different line styles which mimic traditional drawing tools like pencil, ink, charcoal, and in various weighs.

The three panels at the right show a portrait's outline in three different line styles: left in ink, middle in pencil, and right in charcoal.

Our other application, PhotoStrator, will additionally enable you to also create outlines from scans of your hand-drawn sketches in bitmap files. PhotoStrator will also let you use the mouse or a digital drawing tablet to create outlines.